Fountain Pens of Andhra Pradesh - Advocate Ebonite FPs by Deccan Pen Stores

Hi everyone...

I have to get this off my chest…I have been planning to write about Advocate fountain pens manufactured by Deccan Pen Stores, Hyderabad & Secunderabad, along with pictures…actually, I had only one advocate pen with me until recently – the black ebonite…the others are recent acquisitions…I waited till had an arsenal of advocates so that I could take photos like the above…I am describing the pens in the photo where they are uncapped...the six pens that you see in this photo is my collection of Advocate FPs…let me describe them…the four pens that are in the middle are all 6 inches in length…I hope you can see the colours…from left to right they are mottled brown, mottled green, mottled brown with steel cap, and absolute black…all these are ebonite pens and the name ‘advocate’ is engraved in cursive writing on the cap of each pen, including the one with the steel cap…the one on the extreme right is shorter and thinner than the ones that I described earlier…and it is called ‘Advocate Junior’… this is mottled green and also made of ebonite…these ebonite pens are all ‘eye droppers,’ what is normally understood as ‘ink barrel’ pens…all these pens, except the one with steel cap, have a ‘cap lip’…Hari, a fellow FPian, doesn’t like these cap lips and whenever he places orders, he asks the DPS people to make the pens without the cap lips…I don’t have any problems with cap lips, as I feel that the cap lip guards the cap against cracks and holds it together and makes it look good…all these 6 inch EDs are screw caps, and I must add that it takes a bit of a time to unscrew it…almost nine twists…so, definitely not for urgent situations where you have to note down something in a hurry…the Advocate Jr. is slightly better in terms of number of twists required to unscrew the cap…only 5…

Finally, the one in extreme left is not an ‘advocate’ per se, but it is made by the same people, i.e., Deccan Pens…it is a beautiful pen, also made of ebonite and black in colour…it has a brushed surface with a two toned nib…as you can see, the nib holder neck is encircled with a gold plated ‘lip’…and unlike its companions in the picture which are all EDs, this is a ‘cartridge’ pen and again unlike the Advocates, this pen has a snap cap… I have been using the black ebonite ED from the day I bought it and along with this, I am also using the brushed black, mottled green Advocate ED and mottled green Advocate Jr. ED…and as mentioned in an earlier post, all these pens write beautifully, without any dryness even as you pick them up and stat writing after a long lay off.

Except for the black ebonite Advocate, I purchased the other five pens recently…the steel cap and brushed black from Deccan Pen Stores at R. P. Road, Secunderabad; and mottled green, mottled brown, and mottled green Advocate Jr. from their main store in Abids, Hyderabad…as I was making my purchases, Mr. Wasim, who runs the Abids store and is usually present in the evenings, and who usually tempts me with gold nib pens whenever I have been there to purchase the humble ebonites with steel nibs…the last time I was there, he showed me two Brahmam gold nib pens…one made of ebonite and the other made of acrylic…this day he showed me a beautiful black ebonite pen with a 14 ct gold nib which is manufactured by them…this pen looks like a Mont Blanc meisterstuck and I just couldn’t get my eyes off it…the nib has the letter ‘D’ engraved on it… I just cannot afford it at the moment, but I asked Mr Wasim if they could get a couple of them made with steel nibs, so that people like me can have the joy of placing such a beautiful pen in their pockets and also writing with it…he said he’d think about it and I hope he does his thinking fast…

One more thing…these photos were painstakingly taken with my laptop webcam…that’s why you notice the foreshortening…I really had to twist, turn, bend, etc., to get all these in one frame…

Till then…take care…

Jayasrinivasa Rao